


For Now

by Deannie



Series: Women on the Border [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, F/M, Post-Iron Man 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7738954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he is still and thinking, one or the other of his strong, callused, perpetually abused hands traces a circle on the expanse of cotton across his chest. Again. And again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Now

**Author's Note:**

> For the hc_bingo prompt: heart attack/heart problems. Part of the Women on the Border border bingo.

Tony’s designing again, standing in front of the drawing table and its holographic generator. He’ll reach out into the interactive light matrix every now and then to rotate a view or expand the diagram of some construct or another. Sometimes he’ll mutter to himself or to her or to JARVIS. She’s always loved to watch him work—even when they were young and she was his secretary and he was a jerk who wouldn’t know common sense from a hole in the wall. 

Not much has changed, she supposes with a smile, bending to her own work but keeping an eye on him.

When he is still and thinking, one or the other of his strong, callused, perpetually abused hands traces a circle on the expanse of cotton across his chest. Again. And again.

She knows he has no idea he’s doing it. He did the same thing with the reactor. Around and around and around. The tracing borders on obsessive (Okay, it doesn’t border. It’s actually obsessive—probably clinically so), but she understands it. When he came back from the dead (the first time, not the second time. Or the third.), he traced the magnet in his chest with a sort of panic, like he was afraid of what it meant. Of what it made him. 

Somewhere along the way he clearly decided that it made him  _ him _ —Iron Man. Tony Stark 2.0. He embraced the fact that he wasn’t the man who had driven into that desert with a portable wet bar and a weapon of mass destruction. It was an albatross around his neck and a blessing in his chest all at once. 

And now it’s gone, and so is the threat it was meant to contain. But she knows he can't get used to not waiting for the shrapnel to move those final millimeters into his heart. So he traces.

If she called attention to it he’d only get defensive, and Tony defensive is like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum, so most of the time she just watches it happen. She wonders if he misses the glow of it.

She does. In the middle of the night sometimes, she’d wake up and watch the blue light and know he was alive.

For now, anyway.

She honestly isn’t sure how much longer she can take it, though. He’s gone from a playboy without a soul to dead to a rogue superhero to  _ dead _ to an Avenger to _ DEAD _ to… this. Tony Stark again, sans suits and trying so hard to be as normal as a man like him could ever be.

Pepper appreciates the effort. She  _ does _ . But as much as he’s waiting for the shrapnel, she’s waiting for the next  _ dead _ . The final dead. The dead that happenstance and hard work and sheer stubborn bullheadedness can’t bring him back from. And the waiting is crushing her slowly, breaking her heart bit by bit.

So tonight, like many other nights, she puts down her StarkPad and stands up; walks over to him and gets in his line of sight. He’s learned not to fight it when she does it, and she takes his hand in hers and leads him to their room.

Sometimes they shower or have sex—even just watch TV. Do things that normal people do. Sometimes he’s silent and wrapped up in the thoughts in his head and sometimes he tells her each and every one as it comes to him. Sometimes they spend half the night hashing over ideas for miracles that he’s genius enough to create. 

And later, when he sleeps,  _ if _ he sleeps, she’ll trace the scars on his chest. Over and over and over. 

Because the shrapnel is gone. The blue glow is gone. But his heart is still there. And it’s still beating.

For now, anyway.

*******   
the end


End file.
